Washington, Wellman awarded funds for affordable housing

    The cities of Washington and Wellman were notified last week that they will each receive federal grants of more than $200,000 to rehabilitate low-income housing. Washington and Wellman are receiving the money through a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG).

    The grant money will go toward rehabilitating the homes of six low-income families in each city. Each family can receive up to nearly $25,000 in the form of a forgivable loan, provided they stay in their homes at least five years.

    The grant applications for Washington and Wellman were administered by an organization called ECICOG, which stands for East Central Iowa Council of Governments. Adam Ralston, the community development planner for ECICOG, said Monday that neither city has selected the homes that will receive the rehabilitation funds. He said that within a few months, the cities will begin accepting applications from homeowners whose homes are in need of repair.

    The homes that are selected for rehabilitation will then be visited by a professional house inspector from ECICOG. Ralston said that the house inspector will look for areas of the house that are unsafe and any feature of the home that makes it uncomfortable to live in.

    ?The purpose of the grant is to make homes safe and livable,? said Ralston. ?That may include fixing the roof, the siding, the doors or doing electrical work ? anything that brings the house up to livable standards. We want to maintain a sufficient number of affordable and good-quality houses in the area.?

    Ralston said that the house inspector is the one who decides what kinds of repairs need to be made to the house, not the homeowners. He added that an additional $8,000 may be spent on a house above the $25,000 if it is to get rid of lead-based paint and other lead hazards.

    The rehabilitation projects could begin as early as this year. Ralston said that the refurbishing projects have to be open to the public for bids because federal funds are involved. He said that two projects are typically bid at a time, which means that the six rehab projects in the two cities will not run concurrently.

    Ralston said he was thrilled to learn that Washington and Wellman both received the grant.

    ?Fewer than half the applicants received funding during this round of applications,? said Ralston. 

For more, see our May 17 print edition.